


people like us

by carolinka



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, M/M, Pining Steve Rogers, Pining Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 06:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19267711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinka/pseuds/carolinka
Summary: Loving Steve Rogers is flying the nuke into the space. It opens up to infinity and endless unsolvable mysteries that he’s just not smart enough to figure out. It makes him sweat and wake up screaming with nightmares. But it saves the world, so Tony sucks it up.





	people like us

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't figure out how to make the timelines clear without adding the actual dates so here's an explanation:  
> The present time story "starts" as Carol brings Tony back to the earth and before that is just Tony pining.
> 
>  
> 
> Also sorry for the mistakes, please ignore them.

His first conscious thought must have been in his mother’s womb: _never love someone more than you love yourself._

It was a thing that lurked around in his mind as long as he knew himself, a part of his earliest memories and for a long time he thought it must be Howard, whispering into his little ears when he held Tony in his arms that one time, out of obligation, maybe. But later in life he realises this is his mother. His mother, who loved Tony more than she loved herself, so she stayed with Howard, even though they weren’t happy together.

She loved and she stayed.

Tony can’t even remember if he ever saw his mother happy. A few smiles here and there; genuine, fond looks thrown at Tony. But always a bit bittersweet. A bit heartbroken.

 _Never love someone more than they love you._ Oh but this one is purely Howard, he knows, because he liked to remind him that people will take advantage of him if he lets this happen.

She must have loved Howard, to call out his name like that. And probably Howard loved her back, in his own twisted way. Would’ve died for her.

But dying for someone is easy. It takes less than a second, there’s not time to take a breath to think about consequences. It’s instinct. Easier to save someone by dying in their place and escape a world where they don’t exist. To not face their death. Dying for someone is selfish, if you think about it.

In his worst moments, which happens far too frequently to set aside as occasional slips, his treacherous mind replays their death in a loop, vivid and sparing no detail. Their last words remain a desperate call for each other and Tony wonders if they were actually in love. If he was the one to put the sad look in his mother’s eyes. If Howard was the one she stayed for.

***

Loving someone more than yourself? It takes courage. It means _living_ for them, giving your heart on a platter, the power to crush you and hope they don’t step on you like an insect they can’t be bothered to put outside the window. It’s like dying every damn second and you have your whole life to think about it.

Loving Steve Rogers is flying the nuke into the space. It opens up to infinity and endless unsolvable mysteries that he’s just not smart enough to figure out. It makes him sweat and wake up screaming with nightmares. But it saves the world, so Tony sucks it up.

It is hurricanes and broken homes, children holding onto their mother as they find their way through dead bodies of their neighbours.

It is war. Every smile is a battle and Tony’s lost every single one. Steve is Achilles, he cuts through soldiers and paints Tony’s chest red with blood. Tony is a dictator and loving Steve is a rebellion against every law Tony ever made.

It’s a challenge, to not fight back and just take it, take everything from Steve so Tony is all he’s left with. He wants to break Steve and hide him in boxes, so no one else can have as a whole.

Loving him is Tony’s dirty secret, one that not even ten bottles of whiskey can make him spill.

Loving Steve makes Tony fall in love with himself. Because he is so fucking brave, allowing himself be vulnerable with this man who’s bound to break him. He doesn’t even have to give him a gun to shoot him, he has his eyes and his mouth and his hands. 

(In the end Tony’s destruction starts with his mouth, full of lies and warm and kissing his lips. He’ll slam his shield in his heart and finish it by leaving without looking back.)

He’s too dramatic, he’s not the first person in history to feel like their skin is peeling layer by layer but god, he’s terrified. That it’s going to go on like this, until there is nothing left of him but Steve. That it’s going to end. Maybe he’ll kill himself so he can make place for Steve’s soul and Steve will be horrified Tony stole so much from him. Maybe Steve will stop looking at him with moons in his eyes and he’ll turn his gaze to someone else. He’ll stop kissing his wrinkly, old man skin. He’ll force his smiles, letting them turn into sneer when he thinks Tony isn’t looking. But Tony will always look because nothing will ever be worth seeing when Steve’s around.

***  
“I love you,” Steve says one day when he’s back from chasing the Winter Soldier, then adds with a sad smile when Tony freezes in his arms, “You don’t have to say it.”

  
“Oh Steve,” Tony thinks hysterically. “You haven’t got a fucking clue. If you’d know how much of me is you, how much I let it consume me, you’d run the other way. You’d be disgusted by the lengths I’d go to erase that sadness in your eyes. I’d spend all eternity in anguish for you to be happy. Sometimes I wish our atoms to collide, so we can make a new universe with just two of us. So I get to keep you just for myself.”

So he does the smart thing and kisses him. “You’re going to break me,” he says bitterly, “And I’m going to let you.”

But he doesn’t say “And I welcome it. You’re worth every second.”

  
He doesn’t say “I’ll always be into this more than you are and you’ll hurt me. And I’ll hurt you back, because that’s who I am. You’ll heal with an ugly scar but my wound will always stay raw and open because I’ll keep poking it with my dirty hands. It’ll get infected and I won’t see the doctor, so I’ll die and you’ll know you killed me. Maybe it’ll finally hurt you as much as you hurt me.”

***

With Pepper it was always her giving more, until she decided to take more than he was willing to give. When he destroyed the suits, it was the beginning of the end for them. He hated giving up a part of him, a part that resembled Steve more than anything, so he could keep her.

But Tony loves giving Steve everything. His time, his body, his ideas, his heart. He thinks, I get everything back and it’s in a Steve form so it’s a sweet deal, isn’t it? He gives Tony and gets Steve back.

  
Bu he’s a futurist, he knows everything is about to blow up in his face. So he chooses to keep his blinkers on, and Steve stays with him. Then he rationalises with himself that it doesn’t make a difference that he didn’t put a stop to two of them when he had the chance.

Seeing a bus coming at you doesn’t lessen the pain of your bones breaking. Maybe you could’ve hit the breaks and maybe you get to turn the wheel to the side but you still break your neck and you’re still paralysed neck down and having a conscious open heart surgery doesn’t have anything on seeing the man you love walk away when you can’t move a finger to save yourself.

You think you should’ve taken the last right, or least changed lines when you realise your car doesn’t have a steering wheel or brakes, just a gas pedal and you were driving way above speed limit.

***  
_Thanos threw a moon at me_.

He holds onto this thoughts because if he doesn’t he’s going to crumble. He is so out of it, he remembers a flying woman, a bit like a disco ball but then, it’s all Steve, Steve, Steve. His whole body screams at him in exhaustion, knees shaking, breaths coming short. The last time he felt like this, he had his arc reactor smashed and... Not going there.

“I was ready to give up on everything for you and you made me,” Tony screams, getting into his face, his hands hovering next to Steve’s head, shaking with the effort not to hold him. “I gave you everything and now I just don’t want it back Steve. Keep it or throw it in the bin, shit on it, I don’t fucking care. It’s all yours. Do whatever the fuck you want. I’m done.”

Bu he still lets Steve haul him into his arms and he hates himself for melting into his chest.

“Jesus Tony, after all these years you still think you were the only one who was too deep in this.”

Tony looks at him sharply. Steve huffs but he is rubbing circles on his back, not elaborating. “I think you’d run away if could hear my thoughts. Codependency at its best.”

Tony laughs shrilly, words too close to his own thoughts. Almost like Steve can read his mind. “All you ever saw was the television version of me. ”

He doesn’t say “I was falling apart and you didn’t hold me together.”

He tries to push Steve off but Steve hold onto his wrist tightly, not giving an inch. His eyes are dancing around his face, face scrunched up in something like guilt, but Tony gave up trying to understand what happens in his head years ago.

“I wasn’t here to see these lines form,” Steve says at last and Tony feels like crying, tries to shake him off but with every tug, Steve pulls him closer.

“I don’t get younger, you know,” he hisses, hating the burn in his eyes. Pretends there aren’t any tears streaming down his cheek. “You were the one to fuck off while I was still a bit attractive.”

Steve’s hands trail up his arms to hold his shoulders and he hides his face in the crook his neck. “Which ones are me?”

“All of them,” Tony says but his arms wrap around his waist without his permission.

“Okay,” Steve says levelly but Tony hears the hitch in his breath nevertheless. “I’ll take it.”

It is so easy to make monsters out of the people you have loved. Tony wants to beg, let me make you the villain in this story, I’m so tired. Let me just cut the wire.

***

It has become easier, being together, as natural as breathing in five years. Coping with the aftermath of the snap has been more bearable but not less painful when they had each other to come back to. This is the first time they are breathing without the guilt of letting down half of the universe, without their breath on their necks.

“Is it because I’m from the past? Man out of his time,” Steve stammers when they lie side by side, his chest heaving with his shaky breaths. Like his body just remembered he used to asthmatic.

“What do you mean?” Tony asks, turning to face him, resting his head in his palm.

“People don’t seem to depend on others as I depend on you,” he sobs, squeezing Tony’s heart with an invisible hand, crushing him because he hears the silent words. Steve thought he was losing Tony back there. His body goes frigid, the hollowness in his chest growing every second, watching Steve’s face crumble. “I don’t think I would’ve survived the crash if you weren’t waiting for me.”

Tony is looking at him in horror, rendered speechless. This is exactly what he wanted to avoid, turning Steve into himself.

Steve huffs, probably mistaking his feelings as something it isn’t. “I know it’s not healthy, spare me the pity, alright?”

“I’m not pitying _just_ you. I’m pitying us both,” he tells truthfully, but softly, putting his hand over Steve’s on his abdomen.

Steve shakes his head in resigned amusement, but laces their fingers together. “I’m half blind without you, I try to find my way and I always think I chose the right way but I keep bumping into you and knocking you down. I think I need you to hold my hands and guide me.”

“Steve,” he starts but it’s all he has, and good luck for him, Steve doesn’t seem to be finished.

“I don’t like myself when you are not here to make me hear your side of the story.”        

Tony hears himself gasp and tries to muffle it into Steve’s shoulder. Steve shivers when his breath hits his skin, fingers tightening over his.

“I know you didn’t sign up for this. I’m sorry,” he says but doesn’t sound apologetic at all and Tony’s so grateful for it, for his shamelessness, because he can’t deal with Steve regretting them. Whatever the reason may be.

“I know what I was getting into Rogers. I basically jumped into it,” he laughs, “I knew you’d be my destruction and I was okay with it. I’m still okay with it. It’s all on me baby.”

Steve gives him a lazy, amused smile. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“It does because I say so.”  
They stay silent for a while, lost in their own thoughts, basking in the intimacy and warmth.

“I think it’s just both of us need each other in our lives,” Tony breaks the silence, looking up to see Steve already watching him carefully. “We go through some shit normal people don’t go through. It’s kind of understandable to go crazy in the process.”

Steve hums noncommittally but his face looks open and his eyes go distant as he contemplates what he said. “I don’t see others turning into,” he says, waving his hand in the air, face going pink with not finding the words he’s looking for. “Needy creatures.”

Tony chuckles, “It’s okay now, I’ve got you and you’ve got me,” he says with conviction he doesn’t feel.

“It’s not forever,” Steve protests and his insides go clammy again. Steve realises his reaction instantly and shakes his head madly, explaining himself. “One of us is going to die first.”

The suggestion that Steve might die before him quickens his heart rate more than healthy for a guy with his history and his nails bite into Steve’s skin where he’s holding onto his arm. “Not necessarily,” Tony murmurs.

Steve shakes him gently and firmly orders, “Don’t you dare even think about it.”

“You wouldn’t know what I was thinking if you didn’t think of it yourself,” Tony shots back and yeah, he can definitely see where Steve is coming from. He cuts Steve off, “We don’t have to think about it anymore, alright? Thanos is gone and everyone is probably going to be busy getting used to this new universe and we’ll have some time off.”

“Okay,” Steve concedes, not because he agrees but because he wants Tony to be right. He wants to rest. “Even if we don’t get the time off that you’re promoting, we’re going to get through that together.”

“We should move back to the Tower,” Tony offers giddily, eyes lightening up with the idea. They had their best times there, both as a couple and as a team, even the idea of living there again makes his head spin. “You know, try to remember how it felt to be that person, naïve and optimistic?”

Steve’s eyes bore into his, “Maybe we’ll start thinking we can do anything if we try hard enough?” he teases but the enthusiasm in his voice is clear.

“But we can!” Tony rolls on top of him, his face split into two with a huge grin, feeling lighter than ever. “We will do good by each other this time, yeah? We know better now.”

Steve laughs, his whole body shaking under Tony. “You don’t need to convince. I’m in if you are.”

Tony sighs and it feels like releasing all the worries with one breath. He puts his forearms on Steve’s chest and he rest his chin on them, keeping their gaze together. “I missed seeing your face without a frown.” It sounds more serious than it should but it makes Steve smile gratefully, so it doesn’t matter.

“You and I,” Steve muses, a dopey expression on his bright face. “We got this.”

Tony has never heard anything better.

**Author's Note:**

> "It is so easy to make monsters out of the people I have loved." is a quote by Trista Mateer and I've used it by changing it a bit in this fic. 
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated! I'm not joking, my heart swells every single time.


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